Manual 'Men under Arms in Colonial Africa: East African Forces'

Manual ‘Men under Arms in Colonial Africa: East African Forces’ 

Authors: Alexander Moradi and Swati Mylavarapu 

Corresponding Author: 

Alexander Moradi 

School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, 

Arts E511, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 

9SN, UK 

E-mail: A.Moradi@sussex.ac.uk 

Phone: +44 (0)1273 87 7141 

The data set contains individual information of Kenyan army recruits who joined the 

East African Forces, mostly during WWII. The original documents are on microfilm 

available at Kenyan Armed Forces, Defence Headquarters, Ulinzi House, Nairobi. 

The data set comes in two formats 

1. An excel file .xls 

2. A Stata file .dta 

Timothy Parson’s work is extremely useful to understand the backgrounds and 

recruitment procedures of Kenyan recruits over time. Alexander Moradi (2009) 

extensively analysed a number of variables in the data set including unit, ethnicity, 

height, age at enlistment, year and place of birth. 

Parsons, T. H. (1999). The African Rank-and-File: Social Implications of Colonial 

Military Service in the King's African Rifles, 1902-1964. Portsmouth, NH; 

Oxford: Heinemann 

Moradi, A. (2009). Towards an Objective Account of Nutrition and Health in 

Colonial Kenya: A Study of Stature in African Army Recruits and Civilians, 

1880-1980. Journal of Economic History, 69(3), 720-755. 

Any user of the data must credit and cite the two authors above. The suggested 

citation is 

Moradi, A. and Mylavarapu, S. “Men under Arms in Colonial Africa: East African 

Forces”, 2008. 

Additionally, Cooperation of the Kenyan Armed Forces, as well as the financial 

support of ARP at Harvard must be acknowledged (see acknowledgments below). A 

hardcopy of any publication originating from this data set must be sent to Chief of 

General Staff, Kenyan Armed Forces, Defence Headquarters, Ulinzi House, P.O. Box 

40668, Nairobi, Kenya. Any commercial use is strictly prohibited. 

1

Acknowledgements 

We are grateful to the Kenyan Armed Forces, Defence Headquarters, Ulinzi House, 

Nairobi, Chief of General Staff for granting access to the records of the King’s 

African Rifles to the first author. We are also grateful to all those who helped to track 

the documents, particularly the Army Personnel Centre, Historical Disclosures, 

Glasgow. We thank Peterson Kithuka, Maureen Were and Jacinta Sikali for their 

excellent research assistance in Nairobi. Data collection was funded by the African 

Research Program at Harvard University, and their financial support is gratefully 

acknowledged. 

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Variable Name Description 

ID 

Case identification number 

ID uniquely identifies cases in the data set 

File No Microfilm number of the soldier’s file. 

File No. might be useful if checking the original data source (on 

microfilm) 

• Files 111 & 1009: These files had information of two 

soldiers. 

• Files 384 –428 exist, but are distorted and could not be 

read. 

• Files 429-508 are missing. They don’t appear in any of 

the film clips read 

• Files 1127-1131 are missing 

• There is duplication, i.e. there are two files for one 

soldiers numbered 1202 and 1204 (Regimental No 

M271). File 1204 was not inputted. 



Missing For some cases, the file consisted of the cover page only (see 

Supplementary documents). Apart from File No, Unit and 

Name soldier, these files do not contain any additional 

information. Essentially, these cases can be ignored 

Unit_origin Military branch as it was given on the attestation papers. 

Unit_origin was standardised in Unit 

Unit Military branch 

Regimental No The regimental number as it was given on the attestation paper 

Name soldier The attestation papers gave the name of the soldier. Note that 

we decided to anonymise the entries. 

Code for missing values: 999 

Name father The father’s name. Again, we deleted the name anonymising 

the entries. 


Chief Chief’s name 

Tribe The soldier’s ethnic group 


Note that the information was derived from a field named 

‘Tribe’ in the original documents. The ethnic information in 

Tribe does not follow conventional classification. We therefore 

3

ecoded Tribe into broader ethnic categories (see Ethnic3 for 

details). Ethnic3 is only available in the Stata file 

District Soldier’s district of birth 


Subdistrict 

District is state level 2 geographic information. Note that 

District boundaries do not correspond to today’s administrative 

regions. As the area of District is relatively large, the use of the 

finer-grained geographic information Sub-District is 

recommended. 

Soldier’s sub-district of birth 


Subdistrict is state level 3 geographic information. 

Village Soldier’s sub-district of birth 


Village is state level 4 geographic information. 

Muluka Soldier’s Muluka (parish) 


DSG_District Designation Code for District 

Code for missing values: Blank 

We matched District with data from the GEONet geographic 

database (Geonet National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 

available at http://gnswww.nga.mil/geonames/GNS/index.jsp). 

The GEONet gave some background information of the places, 

which we included in our data set: 

Code Designation definition Freq 

ADM1 first-order administrative division 22 

ADM2 a subdivision of a first-order 

administrative division 

430 

ADMD an administrative division of a country, 

undifferentiated as to administrative 

level 

1060 

AREA a tract of land without homogeneous 

character or boundaries 

2 

CTRF a place where more than one facility is 

situated 

2 

HLL a rounded elevation of limited extent 

rising above the surrounding land with 

local relief of less than 300m 

1 

4

PPL a city, town, village, or other 

agglomeration of buildings where people 

live and work 

PPLA seat of a first-order administrative 

division 

UFI_district Unique Case identifier from GEONet 

LAT_district Latitude of District (in decimals) 


LONG_district Longitude of District (in decimals) 


DSG_subdistrict 

Designation Code for Sub-District 


Code for places which we could not identify: x 

Code Designation definition Freq 

999 380 

ADM1 first-order administrative division 1 

ADMD an administrative division of a country, 

undifferentiated as to administrative level 

877 

ADMF a government building 2 

AREA a tract of land without homogeneous 

character or boundaries 

29 

CTRF a place where more than one facility is 8 

situated 

HLL a rounded elevation of limited extent rising 

above the surrounding land with local relief 

of less than 300m 

ISL a tract of land, smaller than a continent, 

surrounded by water at high water 

MFG one or more buildings where goods are 

manufactured, processed or fabricated 

MKT a place where goods are bought and sold at 

regular intervals 

MSSN a place characterized by dwellings, school, 

church, hospital and other facilities 

operated by a religious group for the 

purpose of providing charitable services 

and to propagate religion 

PLN an extensive area of comparatively level to 

gently undulating land, lacking surface 

irregularities, and usually adjacent to a 

higher area 

PPL a city, town, village, or other 

agglomeration of buildings where people 

90 

45 

12 

4 

6 

3 

1 

20 

128 

5

UFI_subdistrict 

LAT_subdistrict 

LONG_subdistrict 

PPLA 

live and work 

seat of a first-order administrative division 

(PPLC takes precedence over PPLA) 

1 

SCH building(s) where instruction in one or 

more branches of knowledge takes place 

63 

SHSE a building for storing goods, especially 

provisions 

2 

x 308 

Unique Case identifier from GEONet 

Latitude of sub-district (in decimals) 

Longitude of sub-district (in decimals) 

Name_village Village is a very small geographic unit, probably as small as an 

agglomeration of compounds 

DSG_village 

UFI_village 

LAT_village 

LONG_village 

geo_district 

geo_place 

geo_DSG 

geo_UFI 

geo_long 

geo_lat 

When matching, we found a number of misspellings in Village, 

probably because the entities were so small that there were no 

agreed spellings by 1940. We therefore created variable 

Name_village, which gives the (officially agreed) name of the 

village as it appears on GEONet Names database. 

If you have doubts about matching accuracy you can compare 

Name_village and Village 

Info like above for Village 

The geographic variables District and Subdistrict are not 

entirely consistent spatial aggregates. For example, some 

entries in District are rather state level 3 geographic 

information, and at the same time there is no entry in 

Subdistrict. Sometimes you find a place in District, which is 

entered as Subdistrict for another soldier. Note that the 

inconsistencies are in the original entries. 

We therefore created the geo variables, which give preference 

to places (with the corresponding latitudes and longitudes) that 

have designation code ADMD in Geonet. This way, the spatial 

aggregates become comparable 

!! The geo variable should be used in spatial analysis !! 

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Former Trade 

Soldier’s occupation before joining the Forces. 

The information is available for soldiers who served in the 

Tanganyika Territory Unit (see Unit) 

Trade Information refers to the roles while in the army. 

The information is taken from the Trade sheet form /Report (see 

Supplementary documents) 

Name of kin Name of kin to bequeath any property. Note that we decided to 

anonymise the entries 


Next of kin Kinship of Name of kin. Classifications include brother, sister 

and son 


Served Engaged for Majesty 

Term_original 

term 

Basically, this is a variable indicating whether the recruit served 

with the Colours before 

Codes Freq 

999 681 

no 946 

yes 218 

Terms of enlistment as given on the original document 

Terms in years recoded from Term_original 


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Signature Soldier’s signature 


Place_certificate Place of certificate 

If the soldier was illiterate, thumb-prints or the three middle 

fingers-print was taken. 

Height (feet) Height in feet 


Height (inches) Height in inches 


Chest Chest Circumference (in inches) 


Rank 

Day_enlist Day of enlistment 

Month_enlist Month of enlistment 

Year_enlist Year of enlistment 

Day_doc 

Soldier’s Rank 

The ranks are given as abbreviations common in the British 

army at that time 

CPL Corporal 

PTE Private 

SPR Sapper 

SGT Sergeant 

CSM Company Sergeant Major 

DVR Driver 

GNR Gunner 

RSM Regimental Sergeant Major 

SGMN Signalman 

WOII Warrant Officer Class II 

WOPC Warrant Officer Platoon Commander 

BSM Battery Sergeant Major 

CLK Clerk 

Day when the document was issued 

Month_doc Month when the document was issued 

Year_doc 

Age 

Year when the document was issued 

Recruit’s age 


8

On some medical forms, age is recorded as “A” or “Adult”. So 

if you come across it - that is the way it is recorded. In addition, 

information on age is lacking for some soldiers. This cuts 

across all units but it is common for soldiers in EAMLS, served 

for a term of six months and were pagans. 

Yob Calculated year of birth 

Age_enlist 

The year of birth was calculated by subtracting Age from 

Year_doc. There were a number of inconsistencies, e.g. 

soldiers were not five years older on a document issued 5 years 

later. In these cases we took the average 

Calculated age at enlistment 

Source (Age) Which document indicated the Age 

Kind of document 

Supplementary 

documents 

The source, from which the entries on Age is based 

Additional documents that are available on microfilm and from 

which some of the variables are based (see File No) 

Religion_origin Soldier’s religion as it appears on the documents. 

Because of the many missionaries in Kenya, the Christian 

religion was given in detail. You can find here reported 

religions like AIM, SDA, Quaker and Orthodox. We therefore 

recoded Religion_origin into broader categories of religion 

(see Religion3 at the end of this manual for details). Religion3 

is only available in the Stata file 

Marks Special marks 


Medical info Other information found on medical forms 

Deployment Countries served during the war 

Note that soldiers fought in a number of countries, which are all 

listed in this variable. Countries are separated by a comma 

Ethnic3 

Standardized ethnicity 

Use crosstabs to find out about which ethnicities in Tribe were 

summarized 

Ethnicity Freq 

Gusii 34 

Kalenjin 81 

Kamba 198 

Kikuyu 140 

Luhya 129 

9

Luo 505 

Meru 357 

Northern pastoralists 83 

Other 264 

Somali 54 

Religion3 Standardized Religion 

Codes Freq 

999 452 

Muslim 86 

NIL 55 

Pagan 547 

Protestant/other christian 431 

Roman Catholic 274 

ADDITIONAL DATA ENTRY NOTES 

• Attestation forms for EAMLS lack information on height, chest measurement 

and marks 

• Note that the attestation papers for the Tanganyika Territory do not have 

information on sub-district, height and chest measurement, religion and marks 

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Manual 'Men under Arms in Colonial Africa: East African Forces'

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